Joanna Biggs

On the cover of Aftermath, Rachel Cusk’s divorce memoir, there’s a drawing of a jigsaw. It’s the classic pattern, the one in which all the pieces – reaching out on two sides and sucked in on the others – are the same, and fit together at right angles. The book begins: ‘Recently my husband and I separated, and over the course of a few weeks the life that...

When Jane Austen became famous at the age of 38, she didn’t go to literary lunches, meet her readers or take tea with Madame de Staël. But she did accept one invitation, from the Prince Regent’s librarian: the Prince Regent was a fan – would she like to come and look round his library? After the visit, the librarian, who had been a clergyman, wrote to her: had she...

Legal aid isn’t the sort of thing people worry much about losing. Unlike schools or the NHS, it’s not a part of the welfare state many of us have had dealings with. The sort of people who use legal aid aren’t always very sympathetic: they’ve often done something wrong or foolish or both. The lawyers who represent them seem to be looking after number one. The system isn’t very old, but insiders talk about it in a combination of ancient-sounding phrases and arcane technical language. Yet legal aid deserves attention, not least because it’s one of the fastest growing areas of government expenditure, and so an irresistible target for deficit reduction.